Virtual Modern Edo 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #19 Shinrin-ji Temple

 

     It is unknown when Shinrin-ji Temple was founded in Yotsuya, and it is also unknown when it was abolished.  The main deity of the temple was the statue of Arya Avalokitesvara, who is the human-figure prototype of the other 6 metamorphoses.  It is unknowable where the statue has gone.  The only known Shinrin-ji Temple in Japan used to be that in Sado Island.  The temple was founded to pray for the comfort of Emperor Juntoku (11971242) in the other world.

     After the death of Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199), the founder of the Kamakura Shogunate, the Jokyu War broke out in 1221 between the Imperial Court in Kyoto and the Kamakura Shogunate in the Kanto Region.  After the loss in the war, the emperor was exiled to Sado Island and died there.  After the Gods and Buddhas Separation Order was issued by the Meiji Restoration Government in 1868, the temple was converted to a shrine as it enshrined the ex-emperor.  If the Shinrin-ji Temple in Yotsuya had had anything to do with another Shinrin-ji Temple in Sado, it could have been abolished after 1868.

     Before Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) moved to Edo, Yotsuya was covered with Japanese silver grass and had a farming village, Tsunohazu.  When Naito Kiyonari (1555-1608) researched the area, Sekino Gorobe, the head of the village, guided Kiyonari.  In 1634, with the digging of the outer moat around Edo Castle, many temples and shrines were moved to Yotsuya.  Shinrin-ji Temple might have moved to Yotsuya then.  Its original place?  Why did the organizer of the Modern Edo 33 Kannon Pilgrimage recognize the temple as modern?  Who knows!

Address: Yotsuya, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 160-0004